Savannah, GA - River Street 3D Pictorial Illustration

Michael Karpovage

Posted 24 December 2009 - 01:05 AM

Michael Karpovage

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Hey everybody!

Some amazing work on the Map Gallery lately. Just keeps getting better and better and is quite exhilarating to see all the talent out there in our niche field of map illustration and cartography. So, to keep the love alive in sharing our work here is a little doozy I've whipped up between projects. This is something I'm doing on my own through my own firm Karpovage Creative. Been chipping away at it for a couple of months now here and there when not working on contract mapformation.com clients or promoting my new novel Crown of Serpents (clever shameless promotion ) or just needing an escape from all of the political crap in our country. My ultimate goal is to illustrate the entire historic district of Savannah, GA, then turn it into a poster with labels, historical text, factoids, photography, border treatments, etc. to potentially sell retail to the tourism market. It's a BIG project but I'm giving myself until the end of 2010 to finish her up and see what happens.

Typical of my work, this is all drawn in Photoshop with a Wacom pen and tablet and based on many, print, photos, and online reference material. I'll be visiting for the 3rd time again in February to take ground photography and do historical research.

What you see here is the immediate foreground to the large, overall historic district. River Street is THE main tourist attraction in Savannah, GA - which was just ranked as one of the top 10 must visit tourism cities in North America. I put the website together for free using Wix.com in just an afternoon. It's just a placeholder for now. Click on the buildings and a larger blow up in detail will come up. Click again to get back to the main image.

I still have to add a few more tour boats and a tall sailing ship to the river and maybe a few more pleasure craft. Anyway, nuff ramblin' .............let me know what you think so far.

Nick H

Posted 24 December 2009 - 08:11 AM

This is plainly beautiful, it's another map which makes me want to go there! I like the pop-up zoom box too.

You'll know about this I'm sure, but the other day I came across a piece of (free) software, Hugin, which has some useful-looking features for helping to prepare photographs for making architectural drawings, see:

Michael Karpovage

Posted 24 December 2009 - 09:34 AM

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Thanks guys. I was somewhat challenged in creating the texture of the water and choosing the right color too. I may have to go back and revisit that again as I wasn't entirely sold on it myself. In reality, the color is like a murky dark brownish green full of sediment, but for an illustration that is geared toward the tourism market and also to help visually sell the "product" of a poster illustration I intentionally bumped up the intensity of blue as an eye catcher. A strategic marketing manipulation if you will. Still the street layout is all WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) and that is important to meet the expectation of tourists or other visitors.

On the website I created in Wix.com I am still a total novice and I could not find a feature for doing like a Zoomify. I don't think there is even a tool like that yet for users to use. So, I just opted for a simple pop up. This site will be completely redone in the end anyway.

Oh, by the way, on the large white luxury yacht docked in the upper left I even put my name "KARP" on the stern nameplate! Ahhhh.....maybe someday, maybe someday.

Great job Michael, I like it a lot. It seems to take a lot lot time to make it. I would look forward the final version in 2010 .goog jobbest regards Fernando

Thanks guys. I was somewhat challenged in creating the texture of the water and choosing the right color too. I may have to go back and revisit that again as I wasn't entirely sold on it myself. In reality, the color is like a murky dark brownish green full of sediment, but for an illustration that is geared toward the tourism market and also to help visually sell the "product" of a poster illustration I intentionally bumped up the intensity of blue as an eye catcher. A strategic marketing manipulation if you will. Still the street layout is all WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) and that is important to meet the expectation of tourists or other visitors.

On the website I created in Wix.com I am still a total novice and I could not find a feature for doing like a Zoomify. I don't think there is even a tool like that yet for users to use. So, I just opted for a simple pop up. This site will be completely redone in the end anyway.

Oh, by the way, on the large white luxury yacht docked in the upper left I even put my name "KARP" on the stern nameplate! Ahhhh.....maybe someday, maybe someday.

DaveB

Posted 28 December 2009 - 09:59 AM

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I have to agree with the other comments - excellent work on the buildings and boats as usual! I don't care for the water either. The blue seems almost too bright, like it's glowing, and the black grittiness makes it look kind of dirty.

Michael Karpovage

Posted 29 December 2009 - 10:26 AM

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Matthew, that is a good "ole" map of Savannah. I've seen that before. The first of the original settlement. Amazing to see how the original bluff along the river has now transformed into this modern day reproduction.

There's another beautiful birds-eye view map of Savannah out there rendered in 1871 when the city was at its height of commerce in the cotton trade. I have a coffee table book on the history and architecture of Savannah I'm using for reference and this map is in there as a large spread. I wanted to post it on here to show you, but doing an internet search of it has yielded nothing! It was rendered by the great Albert Ruger in 1871 if you wanted to give it a search of your own.

I also did go ahead and change that water color to a bluer tone, got rid of the gritty texture, and did a sponge/motion blur filter to produce wave highlights. It may still be too bright but I'm going to wait until I add black labeling text on top of it to make a judgement on the hue. I might need that brightness for greater contrast for text readability as I anticipate alot of text on that river pointing to the structures on River Street. I also created some more boats too, including a tall ship. Here is a snippet of that latest progress below. I did NOT update that website though - takes too much time and I need to jump on a paying job today!

Fun Tidbit: see if you can find the Freemason symbol on one of the buildings. It is the first/oldest Masonic Lodge in Georgia.

Michael Karpovage

Posted 16 March 2010 - 09:26 AM

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Hey everyone,

I made some more additions to the Savannah map illustration that I wanted to share with you. One thing I did do is change the color and texture of the water as a few of you have suggested. I also started getting into some of the graphic design elements of the layout too. Check out the latest progress at:

Jean-Louis

Posted 16 March 2010 - 10:05 AM

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Great stuff as usual Mike.
I will be very interested to closely follow the retail plan and its results.
What are you planning for the rest of the town where the streets are?
Are you planning to fill them with detail as accurate and nicely done as your waterfront, (like what you did for Huntington Beach)?

If so, it may end up diluting the impact of that beautiful waterfront. A suggestion would be to plan a design made up of selective 'islands' of city blocks buildings and leave breathing space (ie empty city blocks) between them. It also makes the map easier to read as a map.

Michael Karpovage

Posted 17 March 2010 - 08:12 AM

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What are you planning for the rest of the town where the streets are? Are you planning to fill them with detail as accurate and nicely done as your waterfront? If so, it may end up diluting the impact of that beautiful waterfront. A suggestion would be to plan a design made up of selective 'islands' of city blocks buildings and leave breathing space (ie empty city blocks) between them. It also makes the map easier to read as a map.

J-L,

Yes, I have thought of the rest of the map above River Street. As you can see in the little inset picture (which will actually be the final product) there are 22 squares which Savannah is famous for along with its grid street pattern. I want to try and maintain that visual pattern as part of the uniqueness of the city. That area is mostly residential - (architecturally beautiful houses that are worthy of being illustrated) but if I did fill up the rest of that historic district with the density of buildings and landscaping as I did on the commercialized River Street then obviously I would lose that grid and those important squares and dilute the impact of the "main" tourist area of River Street as you mentioned. I agree that the residential area needs breathing space too and should not be cluttered, plus I have to consider text labeling as well. What I've decided to do is ONLY render important historically significant buildings up in that area, not every single residence or rooftop. For instance, there are several incredible churches in that area, historically famous homes, civic buildings, statues, and little tidbits or factoids of history information (as heard on the trolly tour or on history markers) that need to be recognized - that need to be highlighted for the visitor. I think doing what you suggest - little islands of rendered blocks around those squares may be a great approach leaving empty blocks to be used for text callouts or a small picture dotting here and there. Any way you look at this it is definitely a fun and challenging design as it evolves!

Michael Karpovage

Posted 10 December 2010 - 11:07 AM

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Hey all you map lovers out there!

It's been awhile since I had worked on this prototype but in the last few months I have gotten it to a point where it's almost ready to hit the retail market. I've attached a JPEG of the prototype poster for your constructive criticism. Obviously the quality is lower due to JPEG compression. If you want a clean crisp full size version I can email you a PDF. Contact me at michael@karpovagecreative.com for that.

I value your opinions and have already made changes based on previous feedback, i.e, the water. Let me know how I can improve this version some more.

Originally, if you read the first post in this thread back one year ago, my intentions were to illustrate the entire Savannah Historic District. They still are, but realistically while juggling my regular job with mapformation, llc. these expectations took a back burner in 2010. I have, however, been able to finish up one VERY important section of the map and that is the main attraction in Savannah called River Street. In fact this illustration itself (minus all of the margin factoid text and logo) is now published as a spread in a major tourism hotel guide coming out in a few weeks. So, to follow that public exposure up I am going to roll out this retail marketplace version as a souvenir collector's poster geared toward the tourism market.

One thing that was mentioned is there are no people or cars or things of that nature on the streets. I'm not sure I want to do that - it would seem to "cheese" up the look of it is my first reaction. And this map has more of a nautical feel to it anyway. But from a consumer tourism expectation I wonder if that is a "must" for the retail audience?

Also, I specifically did not include typical map symbols either like Parking Lot icons or Public Restrooms because this is not so much a functional, navigational map but rather a snapshot illustration in time - a panoramic souvenir poster in the classic sense - something worthy of being framed as a memento piece (a keepsake for remembrance of your visit.) AND there will be NO advertisements on this piece. The BIG Savannah map will have all of those items as a functional, folded piece. Not this one.

Jean-Louis

Posted 10 December 2010 - 02:49 PM

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Beautiful, Mike...as usual. You have no greater fan than I.

One thing for me: There is just something about that container ship

The thing is, I love drawing and seeing ships on a map, it's a very well drawn ship and perfect in every way and it really illustrates the idea of the port nearby

but for some strange reason, It draws all my attention. I spent more time examining it than the whole riverfront. Maybe it's like having an overly sexy girl next to a car. Maybe a smaller cargo ship would have the same effect without stealing the visual attention.

This forum is a good place to determine whether this is just a quirk perception on my part...
JL

That's actually a smaller ship!!! There are massive cargo vessels that pass by River Street on up to the main Port of Savannah. I agree it is a magnet but it's also very important to the experience there. Once you see one of these vessels pass you by not one hundred feet away, it is a truly unforgettable experience. The ship I drew originally had lots more colorful and brighter containers on it. I deliberately toned those down a bit too.

Razor....On General McIntosh Blvd. label on upper left.....yeah, it does stick out doesn't it? One of those things I never noticed. I'm going to actually delete that road label and erase back that extension. Good catch. A little more white space will help there.